Stuff
MightyOne: Did you get the standard or the Whisper model? I'm not sure about the noise level of the standard Enermax PSUs, but off the top of my head, I think they might have speed-adjustable fans - so you might be cool either way. I really think you'll be happy with it, though. They put out a great product. And your computer will thank you.
There are a lot of corners you can cut when you're building a computer, but a good power supply isn't a cut I'd make - so I'm glad you went with a high-quality unit.
Happs01: I believe the Volcano 5 is a fairly noisy cooler, isn't it? Actually, I guess not... I'm looking at a review right now. I see it's a fairly low-speed fan, but it's been measured at 31 dB(A). That's pretty loud, when you consider that the Enermax Whisper operates at somewhere in the neighborhood of 26 dB(A), and a +10 dB difference is a 10x difference in perceived volume level.
Quick story: When I received my computer case, I found that the manufacturer had thrown in a case fan (which I hadn't ordered, because I already had my cooling solution planned out) for free. The first thing I wanted to do once I built my machine was play around and overclock a bit - not to the speed I would eventually be operating at, but as fast as I could get it, just to see what the machine could do. Sort of like how when you're test driving a new car, you might gun it up to 90 on the highway even if you don't plan to ever drive at that speed again. Anyway, I figured the extra cooling wouldn't hurt, so I connected the free case fan along with all my other stuff.
My case is one of those translucent plastic numbers.
http://www.dumpcomputers.com/traniior.html
Damn, and they just slashed the price on it, almost in half!! Wish I would've known that was coming!
Anyway, it's got a couple of little vents on the side, but mainly, it's a very well-sealed case, due to the plastic layer over the steel. The main opening is at the back, where the PSU's exhaust fan is. I turned on the machine, and this hellish roar came out. Because the sound escapes where the air does - the back exhaust - It seemed like the noise was coming from the PSU, and I thought "Oh my gosh, I've been ripped off". Then I got curious, opened the computer up, disconnected the free el-cheapo case fan, and .... ahhhhhh. Quiet.
So, there are two main lessons here:
One, your computer is, in a way, only as quiet as the quietest component you have. A loud CPU cooler is going to take away a lot of the benefit of having a near-silent power supply.
Two, and I'll go more into this in a second: If you've ever seen the movie For Love of the Game, "A lot of little bottles equals a big bottle". A lot of quiet fans is just about as bad as one loud one.
My computer is very Zalman-ed out. I've got a Zalman Flower CPU cooler, a Zalman video card heatsink, and Zalman fans blowing over both the CPU and the video card. And I can tell you that the Zalman stuff isn't the quietest part of my system - the Enermax Whisper is. I use the video card fan because my video card is just a Voodoo3 - it isn't fast enough for newer games unless I overclock it. If I run it at the normal speed, and disconnect the Zalman fan that I have running over it, the noise level of my computer drops quite a bit, even though the Zalman fans are identical.
So, what can you do to make your comptuer quieter? Lots. Problem is, everything costs money.
Happs, in your case, I'd recommend checking out a new CPU cooler. If you have a Celeron for instance, and it came with an Intel retail cooler, you might switch to that. My previous CPU was a retail Celeron 466, and the retail cooler that came with it was very, very quiet. So is the Zalman, but I wouldn't say it's quieter. It's probably going to be quieter than any current retail CPU cooler though, for your typical P4 or Athlon. In silent mode, the Zalman fan has been measured at 20 dB(A). The NoiseControl
Silverado is supposed to be extremely quiet as well. You can get it from
www.chillblast.com - as far as I know, they're the only retailer for both the US and UK. Problem is, the price is about $65-70, and I'm never going to spend that much for a CPU cooler.
Side note: If you smoke, you're probably going to have to clean your fans once in a while to keep them running as quiet as possible. The nicotine makes dust sticky, and it collects on fans, which increases air friction and noise.
Of course, as elevate mentioned, there's also water cooling. Lots of people do it, and it's quiet. But I dunno... call me old-fashioned, but I want water to be as far away from my computer as possible. Water cooling just scares me too much. I can't afford to lose my data, not to mention the hardware that cost me so much money. The other problem is, water cooling doesn't make your computer fan-less, because you still have the fans in your computer's power supply. Of course, some people have opened their power supplies up and water cooled them too, but that's an extremely dangerous thing to try. And even if you DO water cool your CPU, video card, and power supply, it's probably still not safe to have a fan-less computer. Air has to circulate somehow. Furthermore, a water cooler will have a moving part - a pump - which generates noise, too. Plus, I believe that most of them have a fan of some sort on the radiator.
Lots of people watercool their computers. I just wouldn't, personally.
If your motherboard has a chipset fan, you can remove it and put a heatsink on. That's a quick way to cut noise. Zalman makes a chipset heatsink. Case fans also add to noise.
Putting acoustic insulation on the inside of your case is also a possibility, but I worry that it might add too much heat. It's a lot of work, too, because you really have to put the foam EVERYWHERE to hear a difference. That means cutting it up into lots of little pieces, and wedging it into every nook and cranny possible.
One thing you can do, though, is build an enclosure to put over your entire case, with acoustic foam lining the inside of the enclosure, to use during recording. It's recommended that you leave the back of the enclosure somewhat open so air can get out, though, so it's not a completely silent solution - and it'll also add to heat.
There's always the possibility of buying a laptop CPU that doesn't require a fan, but I don't know much about that.
As for actual realistic noise reduction methods that normal people can do, making sure you have a good case is high up on the list. Here's one way you can tell if yours isn't up to snuff - when you unscrew the back, assuming your case has a one-piece "upside-down U" shaped cover, do the sides pop right out? Is the case really light, when you pick it up? Does the cover (or do the cover sections, if it's more than one part) bend easily? That's thin-guage steel. It shouldn't bend easily. This really makes a difference in the noise level of your computer. The other thing about a cheap case is, the internal mountings are going to be thinner, too. Vibrations, from your hard drives for instance, will be transmitted more easily.
Having a bigger case can help a little, too. A mid tower or full tower will have better airflow than a baby tower, requiring less fans. And the extra space on the inside might also give the noise from the fans a little extra room to die before it reaches your ears (or microphones).
You can mount your fans and hard drives with rubber grommets, to absorb vibrations before they are transferred to your case. The potential concerns there are that the hard drive might rely on rigid mounting for actuator positioning, which would mean its performance would be decreased, and that if the drive isn't mounted to metal, it might not be grounded properly - so you might have to add a grounding wire of some sort. And I'm no electrician, so I don't know anything about that.
Some hard drive makers, such as IBM, have utilities that allow you to enable "acoustic management". I have a friend who uses IBM drives - he and I are working on a little Quiet PC project of our own, actually, that I'll mention on the BBS if it comes to fruition - and he found that acoustic management did quiet his drives considerably. Doing this has to slow down the drive in some way, though - I'm not sure if it slows the drive enough to matter. I use Western Digital drives personally, which don't have acoustic management. But I've found the 200BB and 600BB, both at 7200RPM, to be very quiet. You might consider looking at a Seagate ATA IV hard drive, as they use fluid bearings, which are reportedly very quiet, instead of ball bearings.
I don't personally see any problem with enclosing your hard drive. It might shorten the drive's life, but if you assume that you're going to replace your hard drive in a year or two either way, it might not matter. QuietPC sells the Molex SilentDrive with a little temperature strip (I'm not sure if Molex does this when you buy direct - I haven't checked, as I've not had the $70-ish to drop on a couple of SilentDrives yet). You put the strip on your hard drive, put the hard drive in the enclosure, and run it for a while. The strip marks the highest temperature that your drive reached during operation. If the temperature is higher than the manufacturer's recommended limit, you can send the SilentDrive back for a refund. Sounds pretty safe to me.
I absolutely wouldn't do it unless you plan to back up your data often, though. Hard drives are unpredictable, enclosed or not. Enclosing it WILL increase heat slightly, which may or may not decrease the life of the drive. The drive may fail after six months of being enclosed, but it might have failed after six months anyway. You just never know.
One possibility is, if you have two hard drives, to enclose the drive that you use for music data, and leave the other out in the open - and just leave the music drive empty when you aren't recording. That's the drive that's going to be gurgling the most when you're working on music, anyway. And if you only use it for recording, it's a relatively small deal if it fails.
Well, that's enough of an essay for the moment. Hope it helps.
